“I bring you the most joyful news ever announced, and it is for everyone!” said the angel to the shepherds watching over their flocks. “The Savior — yes, the Messiah, the Lord — has been born tonight in Bethlehem! How will recognize him? You will find a baby wrapped in a blanket, lying in a manager.” — The Gospel according to Luke.

 Maybe God’s blessing, peace and goodwill descend upon you at Christmas and throughout 2008.

Barrett Marson, a former Tribune reporter and press secretary for the Republican majority in the Arizona House of Representatives, has provided some interesting insight into a joint statement this week about the state’s budget woes from House Speaker Jim Weiers, Senate President Tim Bee and Gov. Janet Napolitano. The news release explains that lawmakers will start meeting Jan. 7, a week before the 2008 regular session begins, to work on eliminating a projected $1 billion shortfall in the current $10.6 billion General Fund.

But Marson reveals in his official blog that lawmakers also will suspend all regular business during the week of Jan. 21, to focus on crafting the next budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year. That budget faces a potential shortfall of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, Republicans say, depending on how this year’s potential deficit is handled.

Marson says the goal is to write the state budget in two weeks, a process that usually takes two months or longer. Legislative leaders want to resolve the budget problems before they move on to other issues.

Good luck with that.

Lawmakers say every year the budget should be the Legislature’s top priority and that task should be wrapped up before other bills are sent to the governor. Inevitably, the budget is one of the last issues to be resolved before the Legislature ends the regular session in May or June. As I noted in a Tribune column earlier this year, legislative leaders use budget and spending matters as leverage over rank-and-file lawmakers to get their votes on other bills and to keep them engaged in the entire process. As soon as the budget is finished, many lawmakers start inching to end the session so they can return to their lives and, in an election year such as 2008, to jump fully into their campaigns.

So color me skeptical that the 2008 Legislature will finish a budget much sooner than its predecessors in recent years.

John McCain

Sen. John McCain did something rather usually today. He canceled a presidential campaign visit to New Hampshire, the first primary state, to actually do his day job. Here’s the one-sentence explanation sent to the media today by his campaign press staff:

“U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today announced that due to a vote in the United States Senate, it has cancelled the Town Hall Meeting scheduled for this evening, Tuesday, December 18^th in Hudson, New Hampshire. John McCain will resume all scheduled campaign activities tomorrow, starting with a campaign event with Dr. Henry Kissinger and Jim Woolsey in Boston, Massachusetts.”

That vote just happens to be on a $500 billion spending bill that would cover most functions of our national government. It shouldn’t be a surprise that McCain would leave the campaign trail for this fundamental task as a lawmaker, especially since Democrats control the timing of such votes and have little interest in accommodating a Republican candidate’s schedule.

But it is a surprise, simply because McCain has missed so many Senate votes this year. Tribune readers call every week to point this out after we publish a roundup of congressional votes in Sunday’s Perspective section. The Washington Post says McCain has missed more than half of all votes this year, and last weighed in on Oct. 31.

As a former frontrunner now struggling to catch the competition, McCain probably has had little choice but to forgo many of Senate responsibilities so he could campaign as much as possible. But the strategy has cost him support in his home state, and the complaints would have gotten much louder if he had missed today’s spending bill as well.

Another example of Ron Paul’s independent supporters at work 

A Tribune reader called the Vent Monday to ask why the national media isn’t paying more attention to another fund-raising record set Sunday by Republican candidate Ron Paul. The libertarian-minded maverick proven again the strength of his Internet grassroots support which raised more than $6 million from on-line donations in a single day, on the 234rd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. This surpassed his previous record in November of about $4 million.

I would agree the Ron Paul phenomenon has been underplayed by the traditional media. But a variety of political polling shows Paul trailing well back of the other Republicans both nationally and in the early primary states. So either these polls are completely missing a groundswell of voter support, or Paul has tapped a small, frustrated pool of Americans willing to invest their money in his message.

Besides, Paul’s supporters had set a goal of raising $10 million Sunday, and media pundits rarely show interest in an unpopular candidate who doesn’t reach his own expectations.

 I’ll admit I’d like to see some upsets in January, just to make this presidential primary season more interesting. We’ll see if Ron Paul can provide any of that magic, or if the “Ron Paul Revolution” really is an illusion.

Randy Pullen 

I have been out of touch for a few days. On my first day back at blogging, I just had point out a rather ridiculous statement sent to the media last week by Randy Pullen, chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Pullen said he wants Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., to apology for a comment made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the politics of the Iraq war.

Quoting from Pullen’s statement on Dec. 14: “At a press conference yesterday, Democrat US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said: ‘The [Democrat] grassroots are justifiably disappointed, and I am too, that we could not do something to end this war. The assumption that I made, that the Republicans would soon see the light… They like this war.’ “

Pullen went on to say: “It’s one thing for Harry Mitchell to campaign on protecting our borders and protecting our county and then vote to weaken our national security – that’s a matter for him to discuss with the voters of Arizona’s 5^th District. But when he campaigns here in Arizona, and raises money here in Arizona, with a San Francisco liberal who is willing to say or do anything – including accuse Republicans of liking war – to get their tax-and-spend, surrender-at-all-costs majority re-elected, Harry Mitchell needs to apologize for the actions of his leadership.”

I can’t believe an elected official in the Republican Party, which is supposed to support personal responsibility, wants a congressman to say he’s sorry for another person’s comments. Mitchell would be completely justified in sending a response to Pullen somewhat along the lines of this:

“I’ll be happy to apology for Nancy Pelosi’s point of view, just as soon as Randy Pullen apologizes on behalf of all Republicans for President Bush’s statements that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had thousands of weapons of mass destruction poised to use against Western interests. Also, Pullen owes it to all Arizonans to say he’s sorry for the president’s mismanagement for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, until he finally listened to John McCain and other like-minded critics who had correctly pointed out for three years that our armed forces were not deployed correctly to stop the violent attacks of the insurgency.

In addition, Pullen needs to apology for Bush’s claims that Iran was aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons as late as October of this year, essentially hinting that Armageddon was just around the corner. Of course, Bush’s own intelligence experts told him last summer that Iran had stopped its nuclear arms program several years ago, and that same information was released to the public only earlier this month.

We know the president doesn’t intend to tell anyone he’s sorry for these mistakes that had life-and-death consequences. So Pullen can live up to his own standards and apologize for George Bush.”

Rudy Giuliani

There’s quite a bit of irony in Friday’s announcement that Republican activist Lisa James of Scottsdale will be the chairwoman of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign in Arizona.

James is perhaps best-known as the executive director of President Bush’s Arizona campaign for re-election in 2004. It was widely assumed James would work in some capacity this year for the home state candidate, John McCain, as many of Bush’s best strategists and campaign staff members went to McCain’s aid at some point after the 2004 election was over.

In fact, James was attacked early in 2007 as being too close to McCain when she was running to be the voluntary chair of the Arizona Republican Party. The man who narrowly defeated her, Randy Pullen, successfully reached out to grassroots Republicans who strongly dislike McCain’s stances on illegal immigration and on other issues that conflict with the party’s traditional platform (campaign finance regulation, gun control, tax cuts during budget deficits and global warming).

James always claimed she wasn’t a McCainiac, and now she’s proved it by going to work for Giuliani. This coup for Giuliani means McCain now faces a serious three-way split for votes in Arizona’s Feb. 5 presidential primary with the former New York City mayor and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

 Claudia Walters

Today, we have a classic, if subtle, example of an elected official using government resources to tout their qualifications to serve in a higher office.

The city of Mesa sent out a news release Thursday titled, “Vice Mayor participates in White House conference call.” The statement says Mesa Vice Mayor Claudia Walters participated in a telephone conference with unnamed White House officials to talk about a speech by President Bush earlier Thursday. Bush had announced a deal with several national mortgage lenders to slow the subprime loan crisis by delaying or avoiding interest rate hikes for an estimated 1.2 million homeowners.

The Mesa press release says Walter was on this conference call because of her role as “vice chair of the community & economic development committee for the National League of Cities.” Got that?

Various presidential advisers and cabinet staff members collectively called the White House make conference calls all the time to groups of public and private officials around the country. In a few cases, the call are important, such as when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff gets on the phone with his 50 state counterparts to talk about potential terrorist threats and grant funding.

But most of time, these calls are basically part of a PR blitz to promote the latest presidential initiative, or to offer damage control for some scandal. That certainly seems to be case here, as the conference call accomplished nothing more than to give Walters a chance to provide a canned quote about stabilizing a difficult situation and bringing needed relief to
Mesa and elsewhere.

Mesa’s statement doesn’t mention that Walters is campaigning to be the next mayor of
Mesa against two formidable opponents in former council member Rex Griswold and homebuilder Scott Smith. But Walters would love for everyone to assume from the news release that she’s a person with important connections, all the way to the White House, which would be very useful if she gets the mayor’s job.

The use of the city’s time and money to write and distribute this dubious news release is legal, but it’s not prudent. And it’s a bad precedent during an election campaign that’s critical to the future of
Mesa.

Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman

“New” Gilbert resident Donna Davis has a guest column today in the Tribune calling on her neighbors to rise up and sweep the town’s current leadership out of office. But she’s not stepping forward to take the political stones and arrows in their place, which could limit the impact of her views to that of armchair quarterbacks everywhere.

I say Davis is a “new” resident because she used to be one of those county island residents who passionately pushed for Gilbert to provide fire department services without annexation into the town. Davis lost that battle as her neighborhood sought to join the town once it was clear that Rural/Metro would end regular service to that area.

Davis hasn’t gone away, but continues to criticize the leadership of Mayor Steve Berman and Town Manager George Pettit. She speaks out frequently about what she sees as unmitigated arrogance from Berman and a lap-dog attitude from the rest of the Town Council.

But Davis won’t offer Gilbert voters a chance to compare her views on leadership with the current officeholders. Davis told me in an email message she has no plans to seek a seat on the Town Council.

I’m not surprised. Davis is far from alone in her criticism of Berman and the council. Some of those critics ran a united campaign during last spring to oust two incumbents. They failed, and they didn’t really come close.

It’s easier to complain about public officials in blogs and letters to the editor and to launch attack Web sites, than to stand before voters in an election campaign and convince them that you would do a better job.

Berman and his allies will continue take easy victories, and rightly claim they have wide public support, if credible challengers are unable make their point at the ballot box.

Mark Rey

In the past two years, I have noticed an important change in attitude by environmentalists and conservationists toward protecting our national forests. Deep mistrust of President Bush’s interest in environmental protection had prompted many eco-friendly groups to oppose his forest restoration plans in almost knee-jerk fashion.

Recently, those groups have been more open to working with federal officials on developing plans to trim and to thin overgrown areas, rather than see these forests erupt with out-of-control wildfires that do far more harm to the environment than responsible logging ever could.

My impression was confirmed last week during a visit to the Tribune last week by Mark Rey, an undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture who oversees the Forest Service. Rey is well-known in environmental and forest management circles simply because he’s been on the job throughout President Bush’s time in office. He has become one of the administration’s leading spokesmen on national forest policies, frequently testifying before Congress.

Rey confirmed in our meeting that environmental groups have been less confrontational lately, at least in Arizona. This is partly because of forest science expert Wally Convington at Northern Arizona University, whose research have proven that forests which are actively logged, or at least cleared of small saplings, limit the spread of wildfires. Forests left untouched by human hands that never receive the “cleansing” treatment of natural brush fires are the areas that explode into raging infernos, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres.

Ironically, the previous collapse and disappearance of Arizona’s logging industry also has played a role. Rey said those areas of the country where logging still exists are far more likely to try to block every effort at forest restoration. These areas haven’t suffered the worst effects of wildfires (because logging has kept the forests in relatively better health) and so residents and local special-interest groups still haven’t made the connection between proper forest treatment and preventing disasters.

Rey pointed to the Lake Tahoe area, which suffered devastating blazes last year. Before, local officials fiercely fought logging, especially along streams and rivers that feed Lake Tahoe, out of fear that loggers would displace sand, dirt and other debris to muddy the lake’s clear waters.

Of course, the ash from the wildfires was far more destructive to Lake Tahoe’s beauty. So, Nevada and
Lake Tahoe officials now are fairly supportive of tree removal and reforestation efforts, Rey said.

I also asked Rey about the recent move to charge user fees to enter the national forests. Some Tribune readers have been upset that Arizona’s forests haven’t seen more improvements to recreational areas (campgrounds, boat docks, hiking trails, etc) since the federal government is bringing in more money.

Rey said it will take time for the user fee revenues to build up and fund enough improvements for the public to notice widespread changes. While user fees had been tested in some areas for several years, a nationwide user fee program has been in place only since 2006, he said.

Jim Payne, a spokesman for the Forest Service’s Southwest region, added those user fees stay with the specific national forest where they are collected. That’s why the Tonto National Forest was able to start construction this year on new boat docks and other amenities at the lakes along the Salt River, he said.